by Frankie Love
"It's a tight schedule, but not the worst."
"I know." Jude nods. "Worst case scenario, we blow all of Cassius's money on a shitty film."
We laugh, knowing it isn't even remotely a possibility. After Cassius brought money to the table, several other investors that Jude had been hoping to work with ponied up.
"So, when do I meet the cast?"
"Looks like your leading lady just got here," Jude says, pointing to the parking lot behind us.
I turn, following his gaze.
And blink. My heart beats fast as I take in the sight of the familiar car.
"What the fuck?" I say, my body moving before my mind can even register what’s happening. Then I'm breaking into a run toward the parking lot.
Because hell, walking away has never been my style.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bexley
I shut the door of my Volvo and walk toward the movie set, still not quite believing that I'm coming here today. That this is actually my life.
The life I chose.
Of course, Principal Pratt offered me a solid job. A career path that a lot of people would find fulfilling.
But not me.
Still, I have no idea what to expect.
I just hope that Jude didn't make a terrible judgment call when he hired me. I hope I can hack it.
Locking my door, I turn around, only to see someone running toward me.
Fast.
I blink. Knowing this moment—the moment I waited for and planned for and really hoped wasn't a complete disaster in terms of timing—is here.
Holden sees me.
He stops across from me, catching his breath.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, and I already feel hope bubble inside me in the deepest, truest way.
He shakes his head. We haven't spoken in two months.
After I turned down my job at Tolling High, I realized I needed to come to LA, like I always wanted, and begin carving out a life of my own.
I knew Jude had offered me a role in a project, but I didn't want to call in favors before I even tried on my own.
But life is funny. After living here for two days—two days where I debated how soon I should call Holden, how exactly I should even apologize—I ran into Jude at the taco truck he'd introduced me to.
And he asked me to audition, swearing he wouldn't even tell the casting director who I was.
And so I did.
And I got the leading role.
That was when Jude told me who the leading man was.
That's also when I came up with the harebrained idea to hold out and wait until right now to apologize to Holden.
Two months is a long time, but a lot shorter than four freaking years. That's a big improvement. And I'm hoping he sees it that way, too.
Jude has affirmed that it will be worth the wait, that the moment will be movie-worthy. Cassius and Evangeline even agreed to help bolster Holden's spirits as we waited with bated breath for the big reveal.
Sometimes, timing is everything.
"I'm out of retirement," I tell him nervously.
He shakes his head. "You're in this movie?"
"Yeah. I'm playing Scarlett." I want to wrap my arms around him. I want to wrap my life around his.
"I'm playing Rhett."
"I know," I admit.
"You knew?"
I nod, scared he's going to push me away. Scared I'm too late, that waiting two months was the wrong call.
"You moved to LA?"
"Two months ago."
"You never called."
"I wanted to give you space," I told him. "To let you decide…."
"What kind of person I was?" he asks.
Holden deserved a chance to decide what kind of man he wanted to be without me there, pressuring him ... at least that’s what his friends told me.
Apparently he's stopped his pool parties, the tabloid-worthy antics. Apparently he used the space he had to become a man—on his own terms, without me pushing him. I would always have questioned if it was what he really wanted.
This way, I’m certain.
And I hope he’s certain, too.
"Fuck, Bexley," he says.
"Am I too late?" I ask, tears filling my eyes.
"I would have waited forever," he says, pulling me to him.
"What's with us and parking lots?" I ask, looking around before he cups my face with his hand. "I'm sorry."
"I don't want a forgiveness fuck," he says.
"I wasn't offering you one," I say, my heart pounding. Hope surging.
"What are you offering?" he asks.
"My heart. My soul. My everything."
"Dammit, Bexley, you can't run again. You understand that?"
"I love you," I whisper, my words covered with my tears, but he hears me, knows me, believes me.
"I'll love you forever." His eyes sear into mine, and there’s no hiding, no holding back.
"What are the odds?" I say, laughing at the tears brimming in my eyes.
"It was always meant to be like this."
"This messy?"
"This beautiful."
He kisses me then, long and hard, our mouths colliding and our hearts crashing, and everything undone, and everything coming together as one.
I couldn't have scripted it better if I'd tried.
I
Saint Jude
Los Angeles Bad Boys
Chapter One
Jude
Falling in love fucking sucks.
No one tells you that. Or at least, no one I listen to told me that.
But damn, it’s the truth.
And standing in my driveway, watching Rachel throw her tote bags into the car with a man I don’t know—not even stopping to think about her daughter—I realize that I never loved this woman.
It was Etta who taught me about love.
When Etta was born, I knew I was a goner. She was small and precious, and would sleep in my arms. It was a love that I could contain, that I could manage. That I could literally hold in my hands.
But there’s a lot of pressure with that amount of responsibility. Etta needs me. I can’t fuck it up. Her life is on the line.
And that terrifies me. That is what sucks.
Especially now.
Now, I’m all this six-month old girl has got—because her mother is determined to go, and God knows Rachel is not a force that can be stopped.
“I’m done with this life, Jude,” Rachel shouts, apparently having determined that I’m the root of her problems. Me, the guy who’s fucking taken care of her for the past eighteen months without asking for a single thing in return.
Me, the guy who would take care of her forever because I don’t quit on people, even when I should.
Especially not when that person is my daughter’s mother.
“Why today, of all days, do you choose to go?” I ask, wanting to understand how she could just up and leave on a random Tuesday morning while Etta is asleep in her crib.
“Because Conrad here promised to take me on a road trip.” Rachel is high, her glassy eyes and stringy hair the epitome of a mess, her mind already made up. She hasn’t wanted to be here for weeks. She never came home last night, and now, at six a.m., she shows up, strung out and packing her clothes.
“Etta needs her mother,” I try. “You need help, Rachel. Let me help you.” I’m already thinking about the rehab centers I’ve called, the ones who are willing to take her any time she will admit herself.
I’m guessing that now, with Conrad behind his wheel, smoking his damn cigarette, smirking at our domestic exchange, she must think she has better prospects.
Fuck this shit. I know Etta and I are the best things that have ever happened to Rachel, but she’s so hell bent on fucking up every good thing she has going.
“Etta doesn’t need me,” Rachel says, frowning, not having any of it. “She has you. Saint Jude. You fucking think you can save every lost cause in the world. But I’m done, I�
��m out. I don’t need your saving.”
I want to scream, punch something. Fucking show her that she’s being unreasonable. Crazy.
I don’t want her to stay for me … I want her to stay for Etta. I want her to get cleaned up and learn what truly matters.
Instead, Rachel opens the passenger door, slides inside. She offers me a small noncommittal wave, before letting Conrad drive her away.
“Fuck!” I scream to the sky.
How the hell did I get here, to today? My life is a joke, a fucking dick tease where I’m the one left with blue balls.
Left wanting.
I’m here, in a fancy-ass house in Los Angeles, with more on my plate than I can fucking handle.
Watching her leave down the road in another man’s car, I swear it: I’m over women. Over the drama and the fucking bullshit and the games and the disappearing and the falling in and out. And the falling apart.
I am over women.
And I swear: besides Etta, I’ll never have one for longer than a single night ever again.
Going back into the house, I hear Etta stirring. It’s a solid hour before she usually wakes, but maybe somehow she knows that her mom just left her. Left us.
Still, I can’t help wondering how my life got to this point. How did I start off owning this town, and end up here?
Eight months ago I made a film with Hollywood Holden and Oscar-nominated actress Bexley Madden. And now? Now I’m looking at a six-month-old baby girl, who looks nothing like me: different eyes, different nose, different hair.
And her mom is gone.
Getting tied up with Rachel changed everything. My friends thought I should have walked away in the first place, and never let a woman like Rachel into my life. Before Etta, Rachel was a model with a handful of high-end contracts, but every time she was close to making a real name for herself she sabotaged her opportunities. She was a messed up, beautiful wreck of a girl with more problems than I could handle.
But I wanted to help her, plain and simple. I don’t know if that makes me a fool or a saint.
Maybe I do have some complex about wanting to save people, take care of people. But is that such a fucking bad thing? To want to fix things? Make things right? Better?
No one did that for me as a kid and growing up, always fending for myself, fucking sucked.
I can’t go back and change things for myself, but I can do my best to change things for the people around me. To step in. Step up.
But nothing’s better now than it was when Rachel and I met. All that effort, all that work to take care of her. For what?
Etta’s crying, ready for a diaper change and a bottle. I can give her that. I want to give her that. I swear I’ll give her that for now, forever. For as long as she needs me.
A few years back, I was such a different person. I spent my whole life being a so-called bad boy. I had it all: women, booze, and a cock that always got me what I wanted.
But now? As long as I have Etta, I’ll never be that man again.
Etta sees me through the rungs of the crib. She knows I’m watching her. She sees me.
I just hope I’m enough.
Because, hell—right now, I’m all she’s got.
Chapter Two
Catalina
If I watch one more episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta I’m seriously going to … okay, I don’t know what I’m going to do, exactly. And I don’t want to be some melodramatic girl who’s tossing out ridiculous ultimatums, but the truth is I’m just bored out of my freaking mind.
It’s not a secret. I’ve been lying on this couch in my brother’s guesthouse for six months straight. Six months where I basically quit … everything.
Completely.
I didn’t apply to any film program. That was just a bullshit excuse to get out of Yuri’s clutches. I needed to get the eff out of Berkeley, and this seemed like the surest, quickest bet.
It was the right call. My mom moved to town a few months before I did, and my big brother Holden … well, what was he going to do? Not let me move into his empty, rent-free, gorgeous oceanfront guesthouse? I mean he’s a total douche, but he’s not that big of an asshole. He’s still my big brother.
The truth is, I’ve always been in Holden’s shadow. How could you not live there when your brother is a narcissistic, womanizing, demigod of a man?
And no, this is not some opening chapter about a girl who has some stepbrother fantasies. I’m talking about the fact that my brother is basically the most sought-after bachelor in America.
At least, he was before he hooked up with Bexley—who, I might add, is really adorable and way too good for him, but I guess in some ways they are perfect for one another. The yin to his yang, the good to his bad. The sweet to his … salty?
But eww, that is getting way too personal.
I don’t even know why I’m thinking about them, but it’s a commercial break and I’m drinking warm Diet Coke, eating SmartPop, and wondering what the actual fuck is happening to my life.
The biggest issue here isn’t even that I need to do something. The biggest issue is that Holden is going to walk through the guesthouse doors in about one hour and stage an intervention.
How do I know this?
Mostly because yesterday he came here and said, “If I come into your room after I get off work tomorrow”—which, sidebar, get off work is code for hanging out with his personal trainer—“and you’re still in the same sweatpants as yesterday, and haven’t showered, I’m calling in backup.”
Backup means my mom will come here and try to drag out what happened to cause me to go into this spiral of self-destruction.
Maybe I am trying to sabotage my life. I mean, my mom coming over here should be enough of a threat. Instead, I’m still shoveling popcorn down my throat, as if the fact the bag says 100 cal per 100 cups makes it go anywhere besides my ass. Ignoring the fact that Diet Coke is basically the equivalent of guzzling GMOs. Ignoring the fact that coming face-to-face with my problems is the last thing I want to do.
I click off the TV and bury myself under the covers of my bed.
Anyone who was watching me at this exact moment would think This girl is an entitled brat. And they’d probably be right—except they don’t know my whole story.
My whole story equals an asshole of an ex-boyfriend who pretty much destroyed all of my confidence.
Which is fucking depressing, considering I’m a newly-minted twenty-two-year-old. The world is my horizon, or oysters in my hand, or whatever the hell it is people say; I could do anything.
Could being the operative word here, though, isn’t it? Could changes everything.
Right now I could get out of bed, take a shower, be presentable, and not have my brother moaning about me going back to school or getting a job. He says he won’t let me live off his riches forever. Which, I mean, I get on some level. But the dude is a freaking millionaire.
This house alone, right? Six thousand square feet of heaven on the coast of California.
But even with this inspirational backdrop, I feel stuck. I gave my heart to a man who had no clue what to do with it, who ripped it to shreds. He broke me down and broke me apart.
Yeah, getting mixed up with Yuri was pretty much the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, but you can’t exactly take back the things in your past, can you?
If you could, I’d obviously change a few things. I’d never go out with a crime lord and become his pseudo-sex-slave. I’d never let him use me for nine months when I could have been going to college like a proper undergrad.
Or, at the very least, I’d be honest with my family about what was actually going on. But I didn’t, because Yuri did one thing really well. He made me feel vital. Useful. Necessary.
And that was enough to keep me under his thumb. But then I wanted to go visit my brother, and Yuri did not like that idea.
In fact, he forbade me from leaving him.
That was the tipping point for me. Because feeling wanted is important, but fee
ling trapped? Not so much.
Knowing I needed to leave Yuri for good, I made an excuse to my brother, and moved down here without telling Yuri. But once I got here, I couldn’t shake the disappointment. I’d let myself get caught up with a man who hurt me.
At some point I must fall asleep under the duvet cover, because the next thing I know Holden is here, in my bedroom. Thank God I’m actually dressed, and don’t have like, you know, a vibrator between my legs or something. That would be pretty much mortifying.
To clarify, the mortifying thing would not be that I was taking care of things—that’s pretty much a given these days, considering no one is around to give me a lady boner. The mortifying thing would have been my brother catching me taking care of said things.
Okay. Side-tangent, point being: Holden is here looking at me with a scowl on his face and probably thinking the worst.
Okay, not probably. Now he’s screaming.
So definitely thinking the worst.
“Are you shitting me right now, Cat?” Holden yells.
“You’re not my mom.”
“Yeah, but I can call Mom to come over here. Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want. If I did, this would all be a hell of a lot easier.”
“Cat,” Holden says. “I love you. And not just because you’re my sister. I love that you’re smart and talented—”
“Oh, come on,” I say, tossing my blanket to the floor as I stand. With my hands on my hips, I prepare to lay into him. “I’m doing everything I can to just, you know, keep myself together.”
“This is what you call keeping it together?” Holden points around the room, incredulous.
“Okay, not exactly keeping it together—but, Holden, of course you don’t get it. You have life all figured out. You’ve always had life all figured out. You knew what you wanted to do, and went and got it. Me? I’ve never had a freaking clue about anything. So yeah, I’m eating SmartPop in yesterday’s pajamas and drinking lukewarm soda. So sue me. So kick me out. So send me to live with Mom. I get it; I’m a drag. But it’s like, you’re asking me to be someone I don’t know how to be.”